NCJ Number
170585
Journal
Substance Use and Misuse Volume: 33 Issue: 3 Dated: (1998) Pages: 669-692
Date Published
1998
Length
24 pages
Annotation
SimCom is a computer model of alcohol use and misuse; it demonstrates how computer technology can assist in drug prevention planning and was tested in California to suggest prevention strategies for that State.
Abstract
SimCom is a generic model and based on the best available scientific knowledge. It incorporates eight interaction subsystems. These subsystems focus on consumption, retail availability, formal regulation and controls, social norms, drinking and driving, mortality and morbidity, social and economic consequences, and social and health services. The model has the ability to act like a specific location when loaded with actual data from the locality. Thus, it can be used to forecast the future effects of alternative prevention strategies. The first prevention intervention tested in the California SimCom model was a one-time increase of 20 percent in retail prices of beer, wine, and spirits in 1996. The model revealed that this consumption-related intervention results in a very modest decrease in driver fatalities. This result also demonstrates that a single intervention at the State level is unlikely by itself to produce major changes in driver fatalities. The model differs in two crucial ways from most computer modeling applications for community policy and planning. It is a planning tool that can assist planners in identifying strategies with the highest potential effectiveness and eliminating strategies with low potential effectiveness. Figures, author biography and photograph, and 51 references (Author abstract modified)